The election of a new Conservative government is all it took to shake veteran British firebrand Ken Loach out of a very brief retirement, climaxing this year with the Palme d’Or for his latest, I, Daniel Blake (also coming to VIFF). This doc more than satisfies as a look back at Loach’s pioneering work as a kitchen-sink social realist with films like Poor Cow and Kes, while inevitably uncovering the man’s internal contradictions (failed stage actor, passionate lover of musicals, and also an autocrat and occasional bully). And that’s all fine. But in treating Loach’s radicalism with a tinge of bemusement, as if his deep compassion is some sort of endearingly silly tic, Versus also reveals something about itself, namely that it emanates from the same privileged universe of wanky Oxbridge “leftism” that Loach would no doubt view with nothing but thin-lipped contempt.

Georgia Straight, September 2016